| Recharging
of bore wells to reduce
fluoride contamination
Whenever we use to go
to these very rural areas
and ask them about technology
interventions for livelihoods,
invariably we were talking
energy and they were talking
water. So we just decided
that it is not enough
that we intervene with
energy. If we are an organisation
that responds to their
needs, we should also
be looking at water-related
interventions.
So we started a division
on water and we still
try to focus on water
and livelihoods. First
thing what we did was,
we started working on
rooftop rainwater harvesting.
This was more of an urban
thing. But we did show
it in rural schools etc.
In rural areas the problem
was quality of water.
We wanted to look issues
of portability of water.
One thing that we noticed
was that ground water
was very much contaminated
with fluoride in this
part of the world. We
experimented in putting
up fluoride filters in
rural areas and training
women to recharge these
filters. It didn’t
work to well. So we felt
that, we should just recharge
ground water by artificial
recharge of bore well.
This will add to the water
level in the ground and
the fluoride contamination
would be reduced. Then
we demonstrated how do
you do artificial recharge
of bore well, how do you
recharge from paved -
unpaved area
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